Billie's Club

Billie's Club was a nightclub in Little Denmark Street, London run by Billie Joice. It opened in October 1935. She purposefully attracted a gay clientelle and employed camp cabaret acts such as Fred Barnes.

Other clubs and pubs popular with homosexuals at the time were the Sphinx and Music Box, York Minster, Festival, Careless Stork, Boeuf sur Le Toit in Orange Street, the Arts and Battledress (also in Orange Street) the Swiss and the Marquis of Granby in Soho. Peter Wildeblood called them "less [than] discreet", rough and cruisy. Throughout the 1930s respectable men in evening dress and camp queans solicited sailors and workmen in the Running Horse. Other venues included the Caravan, the Hungry Horse, White Horse, Gerano's in New Compton Street, Chez Victor in Wardour Street. The downstairs bar at the Ritz Hotel was frequented by men from high society, nicknamed l’Abri (the shelter), the Trocadero Long Bar, the Criterion and Lyon's Corner Houses, Spartan in Tachbrook Street and Bennet's Festival.

References

Queer London – Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 Matt Houlbrook, The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

National Archives: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5133129